Beads/Prayers

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Need something to spark your creative side, but have to get the book digitally? Try these! Some are through Overdrive (the app is called Libby). One option is an urban sketching video course through Libby. Other options are e-magazines through RBI digital.

(This is a brief introduction to some of the best speculative fiction being created by African-Americans.Feel free to explore! Descriptions are from the Nashville Public Library website.)

Okorafor, Nnedi Binti (3-book series) Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs.

Butler, Octavia Parable of the Sower (2-book series) Set thirty years in the future, a young woman suffering from hyperempathy, to feel others’ pain as well as her own, makes a dangerous journey north from Southern California.

Delaney, Samuel L Babel-17 Winner of the Nebula Award for best novel of the year, “Babel-17” is a fascinating tale of a famous poet bent on deciphering a secret language that is the key to the enemy’s deadly force, a task that requires she travel with a splendidly improbable crew to the site of the next attack.

Hopkinson, Nalo Brown Girl in the Ring The rich and the privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways — farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother. She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.

LaValle, Victor The changeling: a novel Apollo Kagwa has had strange dreams that have haunted him since childhood. An antiquarian book dealer with a business called Improbabilia, he is just beginning to settle into his new life as a committed and involved father, unlike his own father who abandoned him, when his wife Emma begins acting strange.

Jemisin, N.K. How long ’til black future month?: Stories In the first collection of her evocative short fiction, Jemisin equally challenges and delights readers with thought-provoking narratives of destruction, rebirth, and redemption. In these stories, Jemisin sharply examines modern society, infusing magic into the mundane, and drawing deft parallels in the fantasy realms of her imagination

Solomon, Rivers The Deep Yetu holds the memories for her people — water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners — who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one — the historian.

Due, Tananarive Ghost summer: stories In her debut collection of short fiction, Due takes us to Gracetown, a small Florida town that has both literal and figurative ghost; into future scenarios that seem all too real; and provides empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness. Featuring an award-winning novella and fifteen stories.

Shawl, Nisi Everfair What if the African natives developed steam power ahead of their colonial oppressors? What might have come of Belgium’s disastrous colonization of the Congo if the native populations had learned about steam technology a bit earlier?